Traditionally, learning is provided in a unidirectional manner from instructor to learner. This practice can be limiting to all individuals involved in the learning process. To develop quality instructional materials, the learning team can participate in instructional design and development (ID) as partners. This article discusses a proposed…

This study examined three themed residential learning communities and their impact on students' satisfaction with their overall university experience, residence hall living experience, residence hall learning experience, their interactions with residence hall student staff, and the students' academic experience. The researchers were specifically…

Busy educators who want to ask advice, offer opinions, and engage in discussions with colleagues increasingly turn to professional learning networks (PLNs)--online communities that allow the sharing of lesson plans, teaching strategies, and student work, as well as collaboration across grade levels and departments. As budget cuts limit…

Colleges and universities have first-year residential living learning programs that use academic and social programming to contribute to students' academic success. While a variety of students choose to live in these living learning communities (LLCs), there is little research on the benefits derived by specific groups of students. Students who…

Working within the general framework of Habermas and Shulman, the research reported here probes new directions of teacher education and school-university partnerships. The paper presents preliminary evidence of the theorising of teaching practice by pre-service teachers and university staff as they work together with the praxis inquiry protocol…

Uncritically applying a community of practice model has become rather prevalent in higher education settings (Lea, 2005). This paper attempts to return to the spirit of Lave and Wenger's earlier (1991) work and to use a community of practice perspective as a heuristic to analyse participation patterns in a final year design studio in the…

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in creating and sustaining an administrative professional learning community (PLC) is time. Administrators are constantly deluged by the tyranny of the urgent. It is a Herculean task to carve out time for PLCs, but it is imperative to do so. In this article, the authors describe how an administrative PLC…

This case study examines 18 elementary school teachers' perceptions of the barriers to technology integration (access, vision, professional development, time, and beliefs) and instructional practices with technology after two years of situated professional development. Months after transitioning from mentoring to teacher-led communities of…

Teachers in secondary education mainly feel responsibility for their own classroom practice, resulting in largely autonomous and isolated work and private learning activities. Most teachers teach separate classes behind closed doors and learn about teaching by teaching, often described as trial and error (Hodkinson and Hodkinson in Stud Continuing…

Maria's experiences as an immigrant learning English in the southwestern United States parallel those of others who desire to improve their English but lack the time or resources to enroll in ESL classes. Maria was originally observed during English conversation and interviewed in Spanish to assess her awareness and use of effective…

The faculty of a large southeastern university were brought together to form a "community of faculty." With support from a federal grant we set out to build what came to be called the Faculty Toolbox. This website serves as a public repository that brought together the faculty to share and contribute to its library of shared resources.…

The shortage of highly qualified special educators is most pronounced in rural schools serving populations characterized by poverty, low achievement, disability, and cultural diversity. The result is often untrained teachers serving students with the greatest education needs. This article describes efforts by a university in rural middle Georgia…

This article focuses on learning and identity-related practices of young female fans of a popular British boy band called One Direction. Drawing on qualitative inquiry into a fanfiction community formed around the band, analysis highlights (a) the literate work fans engage in, including writing, reading, critiquing, and collaborating on multimodal…

While e-support has been positioned as a means, to overcome some of the time and financial constraints to professional learning, it has largely failed to act as a medium for professional learning in physical education. Consequently, this paper positions teachers prior interest with social media acts as a type of "leverage" for using…

If college science instructors are to use inquiry practices more in the classroom, they need both professional support to foster comfort with the pedagogy and practical ways to engage students in inquiry. Over a semester, we studied 13 community college biology instructors as they adopted bioinformatics problem-based learning (PBL) modules in…